William Eggleston & Company: 50 Years after the William Eggleston’s Guide

2026 marks the 50th anniversary of the exhibition “Photographs by William Eggleston” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, as well as the publication of the accompanying photobook, “William Eggleston’s Guide.” At the vanguard of color art photography, Eggleston’s work was initially controversial in a world where art photographs were defined through a tradition consisting in black-and-white images. Despite using a rarefied color printing process, the dye transfer print, Eggleston is often credited for embracing the vernacular through his use of color, a distinction that created waves in the landscape of contemporary photography. Alongside these seemingly disruptive contributions, Eggleston’s work can also be understood as a continuation of photographic tradition. Eggleston created the photographs for the exhibition and book during road trips through the Southern United States, his journeys channeling the work of established figures like Walker Evans and Robert Frank. And his use of color would put him in the evolving demonstration of color’s expressive potential alongside Joel Meyerowitz, Stephen Shore, and William Christenberry, among others. The panel invites papers that bring Eggleston’s photographs into conversation with his predecessors and contemporaries, and discuss this exhibition and book’s significance for later generations of photographers. The topics may include but are not limited to photobooks, exhibitions of color photographs, color photographic processes (perhaps especially the dye transfer print that Eggleston is known for), the vernacular, snapshots, Southern photography and the aesthetic of the Southern Gothic, the correspondence between photography and cinematography in road movies and music videos, among others.